A page to show up #1 on Google when searching for "Jeremiah" (Currently #4). Only the prophet and TV show left! I have the edge, TV show is cancelled and the prophet isn't generating any new content.

The prophet, TV show, and that pesky Owyang guy going down!A page to show up #1 on Google when searching for "Jeremiah Grossman", and it FINALLY has!

Friday, May 08, 2009

WAFs and anti-SDL assumptions

When someone advocates Web Application Firewalls (WAF), some people mistakenly assume they also must be anti-Security Development Lifecycle (SDL). For myself and WhiteHat Security, nothing could be further from the truth. While WhiteHat advocates the use of WAFs, at the same time what most people do no realize is we also develop a significant amount of mission critical Web code in-house. Our SDL is incredibly important to us because just like many of you we also have a development team responsible for building website(s). Websites responsible for safeguarding and maintaining access control over extremely sensitive data, our customers data. That website would be WhiteHat Sentinel.

WhiteHat Sentinel, for all its mass-scale vulnerability scanning capabilities we are well-known for, it is also a sophisticated multi-user Web-based portal that manages website vulnerability data. Yes, we use WAFs, but don’t assume for a moment this means we are pushing insecure code and thinking it will keep everything safe. No way! The fact is our systems are attacked constantly by robots, competitors, customers, third-party vendors, and everyone else you can imagine. We commonly receive free (unauthorized) scans by products such as AppScan and WebInspect, which is somehow ironic. We also routinely attack ourselves where Sentinel scans Sentinel. Through it all our system MUST continue humming along securely 24x7x365. That can’t happen without a commitment to software security.

After nearly a decade we are used to this type of environment. It is part of being in the industry and this visibility is one thing that keeps us on the ball. We know that if we let down our guard, if only for a moment, bad things will surely happen like so many other security vendors who have been named in unfortunate headlines. In my opinion complacency is the enemy of security ever so much more so than complexity. While I can’t describe all the processes we do to protect the data, I can say it is significant. I’ll see what I can do about dedicating some future posts about our internal development processes. Who knows, some people might be interested. In the mean time one could assume we are loaded up with network, host, and yes even software security products and processes.

WAF and a good SDL are two layers of security for your application. As you point out Jeremiah, this isn't a discussion of which is "better". Both are good and work well when combined along with regular assessments to ensure they are working as intended/expected.